Description

This volume has much to recommend it—providing fascinating and stimulating insights into many arenas of material culture, many of which still remain only superficially explored in the archaeological literature." —Archaeological Review

... a vivid introduction to the topic.... A glimpse into the unique and changing identities in an ever-changing world." —Come-All-Ye

Fourteen interdisciplinary essays open new perspectives for understanding African societies and cultures through the contextualized study of objects, treating everything from the production of material objects to the meaning of sticks, masquerades, household tools, clothing, and the television set in the contemporary repertoire of African material culture.

Author Bio

MARY JO ARNOLDI is Curator for African Ethnology in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

CHRISTRAUD M. GEARY is Curator of the Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution.

KRIS L. HARDIN is a Research Associate with the Smithsonian Institution.

Reviews

“"This volume has much to recommend it—providing fascinating and stimulating insights into many arenas of material culture, many of which still remain only superficially explored in the archaeological literature." —Archaeological Review
“. . . a vivid introduction to the topic. . . . A glimpse into the unique and changing identities in an ever-changing world.” —Come-All-Ye
Fourteen interdisciplinary essays open new perspectives for understanding African societies and cultures through the contextualized study of objects, treating everything from the production of material objects to the meaning of sticks, masquerades, household tools, clothing, and the television set in the contemporary repertoire of African material culture.”

Customer Reviews

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION: Efficacy and Objects • Kris L. Hardin and MaryJo ArnoldiPART I: TECHNOLOGY AND THE PRODUCTION OF FORM1. Technological Style and the Making of Culture: Three Kono Contexts of Production • Kris L. Hardin2. Magical Iron Technology in the Cameroon Grassfields • Michael Rowlands and Jean-Pierre Warnier3. When Nomads Settle: Changing Technologies of Building and Transport and the Production of Architectural Form among the Gabra, the Rendille, and the Somalis • Labelle Prussin4. Ceramics from the Upemba Depression: A Diachronic Study • Kanimba Misago5. Objects and People: Relationships and Transformation in the Culture of the Bambala • Kazadi NtolePART II: CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES: PRESENTING SELF AND SOCIETY WITH OBJECTS6. Sticks, Self, and Society in Booran Oromo: A Symbolic Interpretation • Aneesa Kassam and Gemetchu Megerssa7. Material Narratives and the Negotiation of Identities through Objects in Malian Theatre • Mary Jo Arnoldi8. The Consumption of an African Modernity • Michael Rowlands9. Household Objects and the Philosophy of Igbo Social Space • Chike Aniakor10. Hoes and Clothes in a Luo Household: Changing Consumption in a Colonial Economy, 1906-1936 • Margaret Jean HayPART III: LIFE HISTORIES: CHANGING INTERPRETATIONS OF OBJECTS AND MUSEUMS11. The Passive Object and the Tribal Paradigm: Colonial Museography in French West Africa • Philip L. Ravenhill12. Art, Politics, and the Transformation of Meaning: Bamum Art in the Twentieth Century • Christraud M. Geary13. Mami Wata Shrines: Exotica and the Construction of Self • Henry John Drewal14. Zaïrian Popular Painting as Commodity and as Communication • Bogumil JewsiewickiContentsINTRODUCTION: Efficacy and Objects • Kris L. Hardin and MaryJo ArnoldiPART I: TECHNOLOGY AND THE PRODUCTION OF FORM1. Technological Style and the Making of Culture: Three Kono Contexts of Production • Kris L. Hardin2. Magical Iron Technol